Six Sortings
by Chasmfiend
Summary: 1971. Glimpses into the mind and methods of the Sorting Hat.
1. Black, Sirius

Slytherin Slytherin Slytherin Slytherin... The chant was continuous and made it rather difficult for the Sorting Hat to think properly. Rowena had insisted, when she had enchanted the Hat to hear student's thoughts, that it would be able to sort through all of the gobbledygook to find what was truly important about each student, but the Sorting Hat was starting to wonder if that portion of the enchantment was wearing off. Or if children were simply louder and more annoying these days.

"Is there a particular reason why you want to be in Slytherin?" the Hat asked.

There were a few seconds of silence, during which the Hat ascertained that this particular boy was not very well suited to Slytherin. He had no more ambition than most of the other students the Hat had sorted over the years, who wanted to do well in school and please their parents while also wanting to grow up enough that they no longer _needed_ to please their parents. And while he was plenty resourceful, Sirius Black had all the cunning of a charging bull– he reacted to an unusually difficult problem by hitting harder rather than by coming up with new tactics.

"My entire family's been in Slytherin."

"And you were worried, for some reason, that you would not be?" The boy seemed to be under more than usual pressure from his parents, and the Sorting Hat rather doubted that they would be impressed by their son breaking the family tradition, but it had been specially warned against taking parents into too much consideration. The ones who really cared where their offspring were sorted tended to be too overly invested in whatever preferred (or unpreferred) House they had selected to judge how well suited it was for their child.

"Not really. But I bet a bloke on the train ten galleons that you just put people in the first house they think of."

"You may tell him that I do not." The Hat did not follow this with any comment on how he was sorting Sirius Black himself, not the boy's entire family, or on the boy's lack of aptitude for Slytherin.

Mercifully, the boy was more or less quiet as he mulled over what next to ask the Hat. While the Hat could understand everything that crossed his mind, the thoughts were never quite crystallized into words and so were easy to ignore in favor of a deeper dive into the boy's psyche.

Rowena would have liked his sheer brilliance– Sirius Black might well prove to be the smartest among this crop of first years– but the lack of wisdom to temper it coupled with the boy's recklessness would have driven her round the bend. Likewise the shear single-mindedness that the boy usually seemed to pursue tasks with was alien to Ravenclaw– Rowena had always known when to quit and usually preferred to work around difficulties rather than barrel through them.

"You're a very loyal young man," the Hat told the boy. He did not mention Black's parents, or some of their more questionable parenting choices, because he knew how the boy would react. "With a remarkably well developed instinct for fair play." He did not quite have Helga's ability to compensate for weakness in others, but then Helga had not had that in the beginning either.

"What does any of this have to do with Slytherin?"

"Nothing at all. You want friends, Mr. Black, friends that you can trust absolutely without needing to constantly worry about how good of a showing you've made–" friends who would support him and help him cope with his parents and the rest of his cutthroat family, though the Hat did not add that. "You could easily find many such friends in Hufflepuff."

"You can't put me in Hufflepuff. Mum would go spare." The undercurrent in the boy's mind suggested that he would rather enjoy the spectacle, if he hadn't thought that it would come with his mother's undying hatred.

The Sorting Hat had been warned against taking parent's desires– or children's perceptions of them, rather, as the Hat could say nothing about the desires themselves– into consideration and it could overrule a student's wishes, if it thought it necessary, but the Hat thought that it would not be in this instance.

The boy was not especially brave at the moment, but he did have a kernel that could grow into genuine bravery if given the right impetus. While it would certainly take no small amount of courage for the boy to tell his parents that he had been sorted against their wishes, the Hat did not think that Hufflepuff was quite the right soil for that momentary courage to turn into a genuine character trait. Hufflepuff had a tendency to go with the flow that might very well end with Sirius Black doing everything in his power to appease his angry parents.

The boy was certainly daring enough for Godric's taste– it had taken the man more than a decade to really work out what sorts of risks eleven year-olds should actually be taking– and if his attachment to his younger brother was any indication he had the potential to develop a fair amount of chivalry as well.

"You're quite right. Hufflepuff would not suit you best. You'll be better served by GRYFFINDOR!"


	2. Evans, Lily

"I'd like to be in Slytherin, with Severus." The request was polite and a little gentler than the Sorting Hat was used to hearing from students to be sorted. Usually, the ones that wanted to pick their house simply ordered– and expected to be obeyed. "If I get any say in it, that is," the girl added. The Hat could not really see her, but it thought she might be blushing at her own presumption.

She was very concerned with doing things properly, Lily Evans was. It was not a trait that would serve her well in Slytherin, where the appearance of propriety was the only thing that mattered. Helga had always been the one most concerned with actual propriety, but Evans's principled determination not to overstep her bounds smacked more of Godric's sense of morality– although it was tempered with more humility than Godric ever did manage to develop.

Godric, tempered by Helga. That was the impression the Sorting Hat got of Lily Evans. It certainly made it a great deal easier to sort her than some of the other children.

"Where you are sorted is entirely up to you," the Hat said. "Your character and aptitude determine which house you will be placed in."

"But I don't get to pick." Unlike most students who had plumbed for this particular bit of information, the girl was not disappointed. She seemed to like the idea of the Hat deciding for her, the way that it might tell her something about herself that she didn't already know.

There was wisdom in that, and in another child it might have been the making of a Ravenclaw. But Evans had an inner fire that the dispassionate nature of Ravenclaw would suffocate. She could not simply back up from a situation so that she could see it better, she needed to be in the thick of things and Ravenclaw would not be able to stifle that without also stifling her wonder for the world.

"Not in the way you hoped that you might." The Hat said. "The House for you is GRYFFINDOR!"


	3. Lupin, Remus

The boy was too terrified for coherent thought, which made it much easier for the Sorting Hat to do its job. Not that the Sorting Hat was entirely pleased with this state of affairs, because the boy was not frightened of being sorted (as was common among students, and presented nothing more than an opportunity to develop courage) but of going to Hogwarts itself.

More specifically, of one of his secrets coming out during his time at Hogwarts. He was afraid, and yet he had come to school anyway out of a determination to learn all he could before the inevitable occurred and he was forced to make his own way in the world.

It was a desperate sort of courage, but it was courage all the same and Godric would have respected it. Salazar and Helga and Rowena would have respected it too, but they wouldn't have had the same sort of admiration for it that Godric would have had.

But the Sorting Hat had made a point never to sort solely because of a dominant characteristic and there were qualities other than bravery to consider. "Quite a fine mind." If Remus Lupin had gone to school in the days of the founders, Rowena would have snatched him up as quickly as she could– not only was the boy reasonably intelligent, he was studious enough to please even Helga and was incapable of taking knowledge for granted.

"Thank you," the boy whispered aloud. Gratitude from new students was not entirely unknown, but the Hat appreciated it anyway. In the early days, when it had had a place of honor in the Great Hall the whole year round (unfortunately ended when one first year, unhappy with his sorting, had attempted to infest the Hat with doxies), it had been the recipient of many a student's gratitude for sparing them the potentially humiliating ordeal of being publicly sorted by four people who could not read minds.

"You've very welcome." Helga had always appreciated gratitude– not that the rest didn't dislike ingratitude, but they didn't differentiate as much between true gratitude and merely mouthing what was necessitated by politeness– and it was a shame that the boy was not much suited for Hufflepuff. Helga herself may not have prized gregariousness, but her love of teamwork meant that she had ended up with a house full of social butterflies. The boy would always be on edge there, living in constant terror that his secret would be unearthed.

"Are you going to put me in Ravenclaw?"

The Hat would have, if not for the boy's secret. While the more solitary nature of Ravenclaws would make Lupin fit in more and feel safer, it also would make it quite likely for him to go seven years without making any close friends– not something that the Hat could in good conscious inflict upon any student– and if he did make any, Ravenclaws were the most likely to put the dates together and realize that Remus Lupin was always absent just following the full moon.

Things would get dicey from there, and while the Hat would like to think that no student would desert a friend– or worse, endanger him by spreading his secret to others within and outside the school– it had to admit that such a thing was likely, especially in the House that prided itself on cool detachment.

"No." It would seem that the Hat's first instinct had been right after all. "Your courage places you in GRYFFINDOR."


	4. Pettigrew, Peter

The boy had nothing on his mind in particular, only a vague hope that the feast would really be as good as his older brother had promised him, and that only made it more obvious that there was nothing much too him. Not particularly intelligent, hard-working, or daring; and with no ambition of any kind that would carry him past the little concerns of his school years, Peter Pettigrew had always coasted through life.

It was the Hat's duty to stop that. It sorted the students based on the traits they possessed, the traits they valued, and the traits that they could develop with a little nudge in the right direction. The last was what Pettigrew truly needed, but it was always difficult and time consuming to sort out what might be when there was nothing currently present to anchor it.

Hufflepuff was the easy choice– that was where the boy's much admired older brother had been sorted three years previously and no student left Hufflepuff without the ability to work hard at whatever task faced them. Helga might have been willing to take the students that none of the others wanted to bother with, but she had been a stern taskmistress who had never settled for anything less than her student's full capabilities.

The effort required would make the boy grow and he might manage best academically in the House that put more importance on the work required to complete an assignment than on the grade the assignment earned. Failure was never tolerated, but most students could scrape at least an Acceptable in all of their courses if they were willing to study and practice enough. Pettigrew certainly could.

"Does it matter much to you, which House you're placed in?" the Hat asked. It already knew that Pettigrew couldn't care less which House he was sorted into, the result of parents who had worked very hard during his childhood to make sure that he knew that all of the Houses were equally good.

"It would be nice to be in Hufflepuff with Andrew." There was an undercurrent in the boy's mind that suggested it would be equally nice to be in one of the other Houses without Andrew Pettigrew– so that Peter could have some trait to boast of that his brother did not. The Hat might have considered it enough ambition for Slytherin, if the thought had been voiced– or if it had remained unvoiced because the boy was concerned enough with what the Hat thought of it to deliberately lie– but Pettigrew had voiced a desire to be in his brother's house because he truly preferred it over going his own way.

And not because he had any great attachment to his brother. Oh, he loved him as much as most brothers did and he had been lonely with Andrew at Hogwarts because Peter had never really managed to make friends on his own, but when it came to a choice of what House to be in Pettigrew the younger was primarily thinking of the many benefits that came of having someone else blaze the trail for him.

There would be no need to make friends of his own, he could simply tag along with Andrew's gang. He would not have the usual first-year difficulties with traversing the castle with his older brother to show him around and the recent decline in his grades was sure to turn around if Andrew only helped him study a little and used his experience of the teachers to let Peter know what bits were really important and what bits could be safely ignored.

The worst part was the Andrew Pettigrew– at least the Andrew Pettigrew of three years ago– was a kindly soul (if not an especially bright one) who might very well spend the next four years doing everything his little brother ought to do for himself out of the misguided notion that he was genuinely helping.

If it had been a proper plan, the Sorting Hat would have considered it evidence of a cunning streak and simply put the boy in Slytherin, but it was not really a plan so much as the knowledge that being without Andrew would be harder than being with him, coupled with a rather strong aversion to anything remotely difficult.

That, in and of itself, was enough to make the Hat dislike the idea of putting this Pettigrew in Hufflepuff.

It was supposed to help students grow, not enable their dependency. Oh, Pettigrew would be perfectly content coasting through life, but it meant that his character would remain permanently undeveloped– a far worse fate than remaining academically underdeveloped, as Peter might do if not given a strong push to study by his peers.

That push could not come from Ravenclaw. Pettigrew did not have the intellect or creativity necessary to survive in Ravenclaw, even if he could have benefited from the studiousness the House encouraged.

"You aren't going to put me in Hufflepuff, are you? You would have already shouted if you were."

"I am probably not going to put you in Hufflepuff," the Hat told him.

"I don't know why you won't. I'm not clever or brave or cunning." The first two were true, but the mention of the third stirred up quite a bit of counter-evidence. Nothing big, or the Hat would have noticed it already, but a number of little things.

Claiming that his mother had told him that he could have sweets when she had not, blaming the broken vase on the family dog rather than admitting to practicing with a quaffle in the house– although Andrew Pettigrew had gone along with it, he had not been the one who thought of it– sneaking a handful of marbles out of a muggle shop by putting them down his socks. No more than a handful of incidents a year, not enough to bear consideration for a student with more defined characteristics than Pettigrew.

He didn't have the skills to pull most of his attempts off, even the marbles had had to have been returned when he had been unable to come up with a convincing lie as to where he had gotten them from, but Slytherin would nurture those skills, would turn Peter Pettigrew into an accomplished liar simply because he had no other skills with which to survive the somewhat cutthroat social environment that Slytherin produced.

All the same, the Hat would prefer not to put the boy there. He didn't have the ability to differentiate between genuine friends and people who merely wanted to use him and so– unless he was able to get close to one or more of his fellow students rather quickly– he would end up as an easy target that no one wanted to be friends with.

Unadulterated cunning was also a dangerous trait. It tended to result in people who were incapable of accomplishing anything of value, yet were very good and making those around them miserable.

"There is more to sorting than being brave, or clever, or cunning, or none of these things."

The Sorting Hat waited, but Pettigrew did not bring up any characteristics that he had (or thought he had) that might be relevant to his sorting. Nor did he ask for further clarification as to what this 'more' was and why it had never been mentioned to him before, further confirmation that he didn't belong in Ravenclaw.

Hufflepuff might be best after all. The boy would probably coast through his first four years, but things might change when he reached fifth year and his brother was no longer at Hogwarts with him. Besides N.E.W.T.s and career decisions would have to be made from the perspective of what Peter Pettigrew was personally capable of, not what his older brother had done.

But that was a risky business when both of the Pettigrew brothers seemed to be generalists– decent at everything, but not particularly good at anything. If Pettigrew the younger was determined to coast, then Hufflepuff would not be able to prevent it.

"And it is not true that you aren't brave or clever or cunning."

"Really?" The boy made a squeaking sound that sent the hall tittering. It was only for a few seconds and at least as much of a reaction to how long this particular sorting was taking than actual mockery, but the Sorting Hat was aware of how deeply embarrassed Pettigrew was by drawing attention of this sort.

He hated being made fun of, Peter did. He even hated other people being made fun of, and while he had never quite been brave enough to stand up for anyone being bullied, he had made his displeasure known in other ways. More cunning ways.

The memory was quite clear, although Pettigrew seemed to have shoved it to the bottom of his mind, either because he was afraid the Sorting Hat would notice it or because he wanted to forget it himself, but the laughter from around the Hall brought it to the top of the boy's mind and easy reach of the Hat.

Pettigrew had gone to muggle primary school. He had been one of the slower students, and his parents had never bothered to learn much about the muggle world before sending their child through the school door so he had generally been considered a little strange as well as a teller of tall tales. He had not managed to make any friends and had been the main target for teasing his first couple of years at school.

Then a girl had moved in. A very clever girl who produced more than the usual quantity of saliva and seemed incapable of swallowing it. Pettigrew had not been happy with his reprieve when the class ignored him in favor of teasing her– both for drooling and for her difficulty pronouncing most words– but he had not been brave enough to stand up for her.

Instead he had brought several balls of mud to school, secreted in his pockets, with the intent of lobbing them at anyone who dared make fun during recess. This had ended, as any other student of the school would no doubt have predicted, with Pettigrew covered in mud and in serious trouble for picking fights. It was almost gallant, and at this point _almost_ was enough for the Sorting Hat.

"Yes," the Sorting Hat said. "You certainly have some cunning, but your chivalry places you in GRYFFINDOR."


	5. Potter, James

He wasn't truly speaking to the Hat, but this boy's dominant thought was clearly, "I can't wait to be in Gryffindor." He had no doubts that the Hat would place him there, and his parents had instructed him enough on the virtues of Gryffindor that he desperately wanted them, especially courage.

The Hat could not bring itself to tell the boy that he lacked courage, not when the primary reason for the lack was seldom having had the opportunity to use true courage. His parents had protected him almost to the point of coddling him, and that had prevented him from needing to develop any of the Founders' favored traits.

He had a quickness of mind that Rowena would have liked, if it hadn't been coupled with an incredibly casual attitude towards learning that Rowena herself would have been quite capable of beating out of him, but that Ravenclaw was unlikely to manage. If the boy had had any noticeable weak points, or parents that cared a great deal about his academics, he might have developed a little more incentive, but he could probably manage straight Es without pushing himself too hard and that would be enough for his mother and father.

Hard-working James Potter was most certainly not and he had grown up with doting parents who had tailored their rules to suit him and his preferred lifestyle. Having to conform to rules that he was required to obey rather than agree with might set him on the path to developing Salazar's way of working around rules, but the Sorting Hat was not about to sort on something so chancy, not when there was another option.

Because James Potter was determined to be brave and bold and, above all, chivalrous; and if he was not brave yet, had difficulty distinguishing between boldness and brashness, and was not nearly observant enough to know who truly needed his chivalrous impulses, he was only eleven and the Sorting Hat had no doubt he would work out enough of it as he grew up to be a credit to, "GRYFFINDOR."


	6. Snape, Severus

"You shouldn't have put Lily in Gryffindor." The boy was seething with anger over being separated from his friend and that made it difficult to get a clear read on him.

"I would not have sorted Lily Evans into Gryffindor if she had not belonged there." From what the Sorting Hat could make of the boy's mind, he very much wished that it had put Evans in Slytherin, in the House that he thought he was sure to be sorted into.

The Hat had no firm rules on placing friends together. It was hard on a child to be separated from their closest friends, but most children were capable of either make new friends or maintaining the friendship despite being in separate Houses. Severus Snape fell into the latter category, if the Sorting Hat was any judge.

It was glad of that, as much as a Hat could be glad. Most people at the school knew that the Founders had all been friends, but from time to time tensions sprang up between one House and another to the point where friendship between them was almost taboo and right now those tensions were between Gryffindor and Slytherin.

And Severus Snape was so very much like Salazar had been, when he was young and newly living in a strange country with unfamiliar customs and a language he could barely speak. Desperate to prove himself, carefully hiding his flaws behind a veneer of refinement that in time came to be considerably more than a veneer, and willing to do almost anything to get ahead.

He had mellowed out in time, and the Sorting Hat thought that Snape would too, no matter where the boy was sorted. But his love of learning was entirely in service to his ambition and that contraindicated Ravenclaw. The cunning streak that made him so suited to Slytherin also made him one of the very few people who absolutely could not be placed in Hufflpuff, even if he might have benefited from that House's egalitarianism.

"Are you going to Sort me, or are you only going to sit on my head?"

"I am sorting you," the Hat said. "It merely takes me a little time to work through all of your traits and determine which House would suit you best."

The boy did not voice the thought, but he was clearly pleased to be complicated enough to take some time to sort.

As a means of encouragement, the Hat began to list out what it had seen in the boy, "You're reasonably clever, meticulous when it suits you, more courage than you give yourself credit for–"

"You aren't going to put me in Gryffindor, are you?" the boy demanded. He sounded slightly horrified by the idea. It was a strange prejudice, considering that the boy had grown up surrounded by muggles and that he had no memory of his mother extolling the virtues of Slytherin House.

For half a moment the child's need to prove himself flared up, and the Hat realized that it was not a desire to prove himself to the world at large, but to a specific pair of people. To the grandparents who had disowned Eileen Prince for marrying a muggle. His mother had been in Slytherin, and so the boy hoped that his other relatives would take more kindly to Slytherin than a Gryffindor.

The Sorting Hat supposed they might, but that would have no bearing on the sorting itself. The Hat had been tasked with placing students where they belonged, not where their relatives wanted them.

The boy had courage. It had taken no small measure to befriend a muggle-born girl, while intending for the pair of them to be sorted into Slytherin. The Sorting Hat could see the childhood fantasies he had ruined by sorting Lily Evans into Gryffindor.

They would both be in Slytherin. Snape had cast himself into the role of Evans' protector. He would valiantly stand between her and any blood purists who insulted her, be her knight in shining armor. There was a dark side to this, or something that might turn dark given the right opportunity: he expected to be rewarded with her gratitude. It would be hard on him, especially his pride, if he was rebuffed or if he was the one of the pair who needed protection.

The boy's courage would falter, perhaps fail to fully develop at all. He would become bitter and resentful and turn inward on himself, eating his own strength until he had nothing left. His courage was still immature and selfish and needed some sort of validation.

He would grow out of it given time and opportunity. It was up to the Sorting Hat to place him where he would best have the opportunity.

Snape's seed of courage would be valued in Gryffindor in a way that it would not be in Slytherin, but Snape lacked a Gryffindor sense of daring. He would most likely never develop the flair for dramatics that Godric had so loved during his younger years and that Gyffindor as a whole had never entirely grown out of.

That would put him at a disadvantage. The older students, the ones who had reached the point where they understood the value of quieter kinds of courage, would not mind, but the younger ones, most especially the first years that this boy would be rooming and taking classes with, would push the boy into the kind of daredevil stunts that had always appealed to Godric and, so young as they were, not many of them yet had Godric's ability to look beyond a surly exterior.

Evans did, and she would happily help drill it into the rest of her classmates– if only Snape would allow it.

The Sorting Hat did not think he would. Their friendship would be able to bear Evans's independence, would likely be able to bear the children being separated into different houses, but it would not be able to bear Snape becoming dependent on Evans. The boy's pride would not allow it.

Severus Snape might very well turn out to be courageous, but he would not become brave in Gryffindor. He would be better suited by another House, and if there was some division between it and Gryffindor, that was all the better. Snape and Evans had the courage– and more importantly, the friendship– to cross the barrier between the two houses that were currently on the off and Hogwarts as a whole would benefit from that.

"You aren't going to put me in Gryffindor," the boy repeated with a firmness that belied the unasked question still roiling in his mind.

"No," the Sorting Hat said. "The place for you is in SLYTHERIN!"


End file.
